as long as somebody has left something for a specific person, we can tell just a little bit more about that person's life. that's really the purpose of the collection. announcer: next on american history tv, pulitzer prize winning author looks at the role of political pamphlets in helping to spark the american revolution, pamphlets were the primary medium for the debate at the time, and mr. wood examines about 40 of these works with topics ranging from taxation without representation to natural rights. the new york historical society hosted this hour-long event. >> well, thank you, dale, for this wonderful introduction. it is a great pleasure to be back here at the new york historical society which is the most vibrant and exciting historical society in the country, and when you think 25 years ago, it was on death's

door, it is a remarkable recovery. now, you probably know that this 250 of015, marks the anniversary of the tax act, a levy on the american colonists from 1765. because of this anniversary, the library of america asked for the two pamphlets leading up to the declaration of independence. mentioned, the nonprofit institution was dedicated to promoting and publishing the classics of american writings and permanent additions. and there are well over 270 volumes already. these works were not designed to be scholarly editions, although they normally included a good deal of scholarship. i especially want to thank cannot sydni and ruth of new york.

they are collectors themselves and sydney told me tonight he has or had 30 of the 39 pamphlets. ie stamp act was a tax levy colonial england on bonds, deeds, almanacs, newspapers, college diplomas, playing cards, on every form of paper used in the colonies. the first time britain had ever levied this kind of tax on the colonists. from the british point of view, a tax on the colonies made a lot of sense. the government had just taught a seven years war with france largely on the colonists' beh alf. they ousted france from the north american continent. but the government had borrowed heavily to finance the war and was in debt.

theeemed only right colonists should pay their fair share. the stamp act ignited a firestorm of opposition that swept through the colonies with unprecedented force. in each colony the stamp agents were mobbed and forced to resign, except briefly in georgia, none of the colonists ever paid a stamp tax. the stamp act sparked more than riots and mobs. this debate between the colonists and britain involved all the punk -- all the fundamental issues of politics and government to power, liberty, rights and constitutions, representation, difference between statutes and fundamental law, and the problem of sovereignty. once again, this decade-long debate escalated through several climaxed witht

the american declaration of independence. the argument was exhilarating and illuminating. it forced the british and colonists to bring to the surface and clarify their different experiences of the empire over the previous century. these experience of the punishment colonists had largely been headed from -- hidden from .iew this momentous debate was largely carried on an pamphlets. the library and i ended up with 39 pamphlets. mccarthy, an editor, quipped that we now have the 39 steps to independence. these pamphlets are the

principal social media of the day. they were inexpensive booklets ranging in length from 5000 to 25,000 words, and printed on anywhere from 10 pages to 100 pages. these pamphlets were easy and cheap to manufacture and perfect for rapid exchanges of argument and counter argument. concerns numbered of themr 1000, some very brief and inconsequential, but others important and breathtaking. i can't say i read every one of styles of pamphlets, but i did read a few hundred. some of them contain the most significant statements about politics ever made. addition we believe contains the best and most efficient of those pamphlets. 10 of the pamphlets in the collection are written by britain, nearly all of who were hostile to the american cause.

nine are written by americans who remained loyal to the crown. and two by early patriots who ended up becoming loyalists. the rest are the works of various patriots, ranging from samuel hopkins of rhode island to philip livingston of new york. i want to take you briefly through this momentous debate. it compelled americans to give form to their experience in the new world and clarify for themselves many political and constitutional principles that we still hold dear. a number of british have let here set out to explain and justify taxation of the colonies thomas whately was a sub minister under the prime minister. he was the person who drafted

the stamp act. whately argued that the colonists were subject to the acts of parliament through a system of what he called virtual representation. the actually use that term, which now we use all the time when talking about the internet. he said, for englishmen voting was not the criteria of the measure of representation. parliaments,he 9/10 of the people of britain did not choose any representatives to the house of commons, they were, he wrote, undoubtedly an important part of the comments of great britain. they are represented in parliament in the same manner as those you have no voice in .lections and there were lots of people who did not vote in great britain. in 1765 the british electorate only made up a tiny portion of the nation. probably only one in six adult

males have the right to vote still that was a larger electorate than anywhere else on the continent. there was nothing like it anywhere else in europe. the colonists had not even brought an electorate to their provisional assemblies, their miniature parliaments, as many as two out of three adult white males could vote. certainly this is not democratic by modern statements. women and slaves and white males who did not own property could not vote britain's electoral districts were a confusing mixture of sizes and shapes left over from going backf history, to the 13th century. some of these constituencies were large, but others were small, and more or less in the pocket of a single great land

owner. many of electoral districts had few voters. some so-called rotten barons had none at all. largestengland's cities, such as manchester and birmingham, which has grown in the mid-18th century and had 50,000 inhabitants, they sent no representatives. the early medieval residency requirements for mp's at long since fallen away and members did not have to be residents of the districts they represented. in the still true today house of commons. the british said that all the people of great britain, including the colonists, were virtually represented because

voting, or the electoral process, is not the measure of representation. virtual representation struck americans as absurd. but it was not so absurd for most englishmen. they claimed people were not but bynted by election, the mutual interests that members of parliament were presumed to share with all englishmen for whom they spoke, including those like the colonists who did not actually vote for them. andamericans immediately strongly rejected these british claims that they were virtually way thated in the same the nonvoters of cities like manchester and birmingham were. in the most notable colonial pamphlet written in opposition to the stamp act entitled

"considerations on the propriety of imposing taxes," was written by daniel delaney of maryland. he admitted the relevance of virtual representation in england itself. ability -- x xcode culpability to the cause. america is not a virtually represented by the agents of another community. a swiss born pastor from georgia pushed the argument and challenge the very idea of virtual representation itself with what he and others called actual representation. if people were to be properly represented in a legislature, he tod, not only did they have actually vote for the members of the legislature, but they also had to be represented i members whose numbers were more or less

proportionate to the size of the population they spoke for. he had a more or less modern american view. what purpose is served by the continual attempts of englishmen to justify the lack of american representation in parliament by citing the examples of manchester and birmingham, which returned no members to the house of commons? if those considerable places are not represented, they ought to be. in the new world, electoral districts were not the product of history that went back hundreds of years. were recent, and regular creations within people's memories that were related to changes in population. when new towns in massachusetts were formed,two new representatives were generally .et to the general court the same was true in virginia,

when new counties were created in the west. each sent new representatives to the house of burgesses. in the 1760's there were rioting and rebellions. they had not been extended representation in a provincial assembly fast enough. they expected to be represented but did not buy into this virtual representation. the expectations had become very different from the british in the mother country. because of that different experience, most americans had come to believe in a very different kind of representation from that of the english. believe in actual representation made the process of election not incidental, but central, a measure of representation. if you could not vote, you were actualresented in this representation stressed the closest possible ties between the local electorates and their representatives. for americans it was only proper

that representatives be residents of the localities they spoke for. that is still true. the people of the locality have the right to instruct their representatives. americans thought it only fair that the localities be represented more or less in proportion to their population. despite its shortcomings by today's standards, the american practice of actual representation was the most equal and fullest participation in the process of government are the people that the world had ever seen. before we dismiss the british ,iew of virtual representation we need to try and appreciate some of its merits. today we might welcome virtual representation in our house of representatives. a man campaigning for election as an mp summed up the idea of virtual representation in a

classic, famous speech that he gave to his bristol constituents. is not aparliament congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent and advocate against other agents and advocates. he said, parliament is an assembly of one nation with one the whole.hat of local purposes, local prejudices ought not to guide, but only the general good should guide. sentiments, but difficult to sustain in an electoral system organized by local districts. the house of representatives is really a congress of ambassadors. you might be important to point -- there's another justification for virtual representation. actual representation makes a

process of voting the criterion of representation. you have to vote for the representative to be represented in the legislature. if that's true, does it mean the person you did not vote for wins the election, that you are thereby not represented? what is the justification for majority rule? why should we accept the rule by persons we did not vote for? the concept of virtual representation answers those questions. it is believed the criterion of representation is based on the mutuality of interests between the representative and the people at large and explains why shui -- why we should obey the laws made by representatives who we did not vote for. it justifies majority rule, which actual representation does not. benjamin franklin was this possible for the next stage of the debate. in 17 66, his testimony before the house of congress helped to

justify parliaments repeal of the stamp act. coverage, embarrassing retreat -- it was embarrassing .or the parliament to take back parliament accompanied its repeal by passing in the same year, 1776, the declaratory act, which asserted its right to legislate all the colonies. they were saying, we are taking back the stamp act, but we have every right to pass this act and to do anything in all cases whatsoever. this was a robust assertion of what was called parliamentary summary. there had to be in every state one supreme, indivisible authority. the doctrine of sovereignty made famous by william blackstone in his commentaries on the lore of england published in 1765, that doctrine was a most powerful

principle of government in 18th century political thought. the proper location of sovereignty in the end is what the empire. franklin and his testimonies had mistakenly suggested that the colonists would always subject to internal tax, like the stamp tax, because they were not represented in parliament. but they might not object to an external duty on imports, since they had always recognized the right of parliament to regulate .he trade of the empire colonists from the 17th century on admitted that parliament had some authority over them. the stamp act of congress recognize that too. in 1733 parliament did levy duties on importing foreign molasses. but these were prohibitory duties. maybe the british government could levy external duties on imports and raise revenue that so tourreptitiously,

speak. although a few colonists had made much of this distinction that franklin raised in his testimony between internal and external taxes, the british government dressed at it. in 1767, the chancellor charles townshend admitted that he could not see any distinction between internal and external taxes, he said is distinction without a difference. it's nonsense. toce americans were pleased make that distinction, he said he was willing to indulge them. the revenue from which was to be applied to the salaries of royal officials in the colonies. these townshend duties aroused instant opposition with the riots, and they were stymied from the outset. john dickinson, an influential pennsylvania lawyer, attempted to sort out the limits of parliament's authority.

his letters from a pennsylvania farmer -- we know what jefferson thought about farmers. his letters from a pennsylvania farmer was the most popular pamphlet in the imperial debate until we get to thomas payne's "common sense." he conceded parliament had the right to regulate america's trade. sincead always done so the navigation acts of the 17th century. but parliament had no right to tax the colonists. how to distinguish between duties designed to regulate trade and duties designed to raise revenue? the answer lay in the colonist'' to discover the intentions of those who rule over us. suddenly americans had turned the imperial debate into an elaborate exercise.

this at a time when dissembling and deceit were thought to be everywhere in anglo american cu lture. not surprising that americans became obsessed with conspiracies on the part of the british government to deprive them of their liberties. admitting that parliament had some authority over them, they were willing to concede that. trying to draw these distinctions made them look confused. to counter all the colonists' st abling, the british offered simple but powerful argument based on the doctrine of sovereignty, and that there had to be in every state one final supreme indivisible lawmaking authority. otherwise, they said, the government would end up with absurdity, a power within a power. quoted over and over again, that phrase. a subcabinet official -- they

did all the work -- the subcabinet official sought in 1769 to clarify the matter for the colonists once and for all. the result of his pamphlet, the controversy reviewed was rebuffed. it had begun with the issue of representation. if the colonies accepted one instance of parliament's they had, said knox, to accept all of it. if they deny parliament's authority in any particular, they must deny it in all instances. and the union between great britain and the colonies must be dissolved. no alternative, he said. the colonies were either totally under parliaments authority, or totally outside of it.

this is an important point that is not easily grasped. in british history had always come from the crown. whigs favored parliament and liberty, tories being those who favored the crown. knox found ite inconceivable that anyone in his right mind would want to escape from parliament's libertarian protection. parliament was the office -- august other of the habeas corpus act, the bill of rights of 1689. parliament was the historical guardian of the people's property and the eternal bulwark of their liberties against the encroachment of the crown. tyranny came from the crown, not from parliament.

that difference led us americans off in a different constitutional direction from the english. for englishmen, parliament was the protector of english rights against the crown. it was never a threat to liberty. need toere was no protect themselves against acts of parliament. the people could not tyrannize themselves. the english constitution contained lots of written documents, such as the magna carta. that limited the king. but there are no written documents in english history that limited parliament. the documents limiting the king were all acts of parliament. tes, not different in form from other laws. was no written constitution. there is no fundamental law that limited parliament. today there still isn't.

parliament can do away with habeas corpus by single statute. there is no constitution, no supreme court to tell him he can't do that. ae constitution was not single written document set apart from government and ordinary lawmaking. for englishmen as william blackstone declared, there can be no distinction between the constitution and the system of laws. every act of parliament was a part of the constitution and all law, customary and statutory, was less constitutional. the terms constitutional and unconstitutional mean legal and illegal. could be more strikingly different from what we americans came to believe. it was precisely on this distinction between legal and constitutional that the american and english constitutional traditions diverge.

we want -- went off in two different directions. although acts of parliament like the stamp act of 1765 might be notl, such acts could automatically be considered constitutional. that is in accord with the basic principles of rights and justice that may the constitution what it was. it was true that the english bill of rights and the act of settlement of 1701 were only statutes of parliament. surely the colonists insisted they were up in nature more sacred than those which established a turnpike road. under this kind of pressure, the americans came to believe that the fundamental principles of the english constitution had to be lifted out of the lawmaking process and the other institutions of government and said above them. in all three states, samuel

legislaturesupreme derives its powers from the constitution, it cannot over leak the bounds of it without destroying -- overleap the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation. this different experience with parliament helps explain the different response to the acts of parliament. there were good weeks in america who felt that parliament's role meant that notory one in his right mind would want to be outside of parliament's authority or outside of the protector of liberty. governor thomas hutchinson of massachusetts was a good whig. not imaginee could the colonists wanting to be outside the influence of parliament. he decided it is naivety to onture his fellow subjects

sovereignty. he assumed his action would convince him how foolish they were in opposing parliament. in speeches that he gave in january 1773, hutchinson declared he knew of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of parliament and the total independence of the colonies. it is impossible, he said, that there should be two independent legislatures in the same state. though they may be but one head, the king, the two legislative bodies will make to governments as distinct as the governments ,f england and scotland in 1603 when james the first was king of scotland, succeeded to the throne. in other words, it would create having to legislatures -- he would create an imperium. hutchinson assumed that no good

outishmen would want to be from under parliament's benign authority as the protector of liberty. faced with this alternative, the massachusetts house of representatives -- the response is written largely by john adams -- this is all published in one of the pamphlets we have in our collection -- shows what governor hutchinson never imagined it would. it accepted the logic of sovereignty. the consequence is either the colonies are the vassals of parliament or they are totally independent. it cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties of contact that we be reduced to a state of vassalage. we were thus independent. questions and set it up by giving them this -- hutchinson set it up by giving them this alternative.

the colonies had to be distinct states from the mother country, united and connected only through the king in one head and common sovereignty. the smarts and extraordinary moment in the history of the debate. by 1774, all of the leading , allot pamphlet writers the intellectuals had confronted with the same choice. all in or all out. totally under parliaments authority or totally outside of it. .ut not from the british crown all these leading colonists set forth a radically new conception of the empire. each of the 13 colonies was totally independent of parliament, but each retained and allegiance to the king as the common link in the empire.

he said, that's toryism. historians have labeled this notion of the empire the andnion theory, the current anticipated the nature of the british empire worked out in the strategy of westminster that created the modern british commonwealth, establishing that legislative independence of each of the separate dominions. canada and australia and new zealand have their own legislatures, but they have a common king or monarch in queen elizabeth. the historians have picked that up -- this is anticipation of its. by asserting their independence from the authority of parliament, the colonists had not repudiated the doctrine of sovereignty. they had surrendered to it, something many scholars don't seem to appreciate. debate,ut a decade of

the colonists had tried over and over to divide legislative authority. they sought to get the british to acknowledge that there had to be separate spheres of authority. but the british went into this idea of parliamentary sovereignty could not admit any division of authority. they despaired of trying to divide the indivisible or separate the inseparable. they finally accepted the logic of sovereignty, that they had to be in every state one final supreme lawmaking authority. to legislatures in the same state, concluded alexander hamilton, cannot be supposed without falling into that solar system of politics of imperium and empirical. two sovereign bodies could not exist in the same states anymore than two supreme beings in one universe.

therefore, it was clear that our provincial legislatures are the owns the best of the only supreme authorities. surrendering to the logic of sovereignty in accepting this theory, the colonists were not able to account for previous and acknowledged regulation of their trade. by connecting themselves to the crown alone, they had not offered a satisfactory explanation of past experience in the empire. was ledwhy james wilson in 17 semi ford to make his remarkable proposal that we should grant the king authority to regulate trade.

because mental congress awkwardly put it in 1774, from the necessity of the case in regard to the mutual interest of both countries. for that reason we will allow you to regulate our trade but we are doing it out of the necessity of the case. of an awkward solution to that problem. because the colonists had concluded they were tied solely to the king, the declaration of independence needed to break only from the british monarch. it is something we usually pay attention to when we read the declaration. all the indictments of it is authority were leveled solely at the king, george the third. you refuse to do this. you have plundered this.

but the declaration never mentions parliament. parliament was responsible for almost everything objected to. king george was the only thing that mattered. the closest the declaration came to suggesting parliament's participation was when it charged that the king had others, aith reference to parliament, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution. membersfferson and many of the continental congress were lawyers, they wanted their declaration to be scrupulously legal and in accord with the imperial relationship they had arrived at by 1774. this is one of the constitutional issues worked out in the extraordinary parliament debate of 1776. from this rich imperial debate americans thought they had

learned how to make their own government, how to protect popular rights and liberties, and how to separate and divide the powers and spheres of government. but the problem with sovereignty did not go away. 10 years later, 1788, when the country was drawing of a new federal constitution, the anti-federalist raise the issue of sovereignty once again. these anti-federalists said there had to be in every state only one final supreme indivisible lawmaking authority. because ofhey said, the supremacy clause in the constitution, it was bound to be the federal government that would be that final sovereign body. the states would eventually be reduced to laying out of roads. sovereignty would belong to the congress. defenders of the constitution did not like this argument because it was embarrassing and difficult to handle. the federalists tried to divide

power, just as the colonists had tried in 1760. they said, the federal government can do a few things. the rest would be left to the states. but the anti-federalists through the doctrine of sovereignty back in the faces of the federalists. government power cannot be divided, they said. there must be one final supreme indivisible lawmaking authority. that authority would inevitably end up with the federal government rate this was the most powerful argument. james wilson, the philadelphia lawyer, underrated founder, very smart guy -- he found an answer to this issue of consolidation, which is what it was called. of the most powerful arguments mounted against the constitution. wilson found an answer and he

gave a speech out of doors and one in the pennsylvania ratifying convention that solve the problem, intellectual problem. he gave up trying to divide sovereignty. he said, we will simply be located in the people at large. it in the people at large. final lawmaking authority lies with the people at large, outside of the institutions of government. sovereignty lies with the people, not in any governmental institutions whatsoever. and a brilliant solution seems obvious today, but it was time. obvious at the government as sovereignty remains with the people, they don't out bits and pieces to the various agents -- dole out bits and pieces to the

various agents. even judges were considered to be agents of the people. in the term houses of are awkwardves reminders that there was an earlier time when there was just one part of the government that was representative. that's no longer true. about other parts of the government as representative, even though the house of representatives is stuck with that name anachronistically. i think an awkward reminder of a world that has been lost -- since all institutions of government now become agents or representatives of the people. we have examples of that sovereignty, that final lawmaking authority exercise in several states. not so much here in the east, but often elsewhere with referendums and ballot initiatives and other means of

direct democracy and western states like california, oregon, much morecan use this frequently than the states in the east. whether such direct democracy or sovereignty of the people is a good thing in practice are not, i believe to your judgment. thank you -- i will leave to your judgment. thank you. [applause] i would be happy to take questions. go to the sites where there are mics. please state your name and don't make speeches, because there are lots of people who might have a question. >> you paint a picture of this incredible level of sophistication in these debates, and yet

in your writings, some of the pamphlet writers are names that are not commonly known, which thepts my question -- average person, how in and were they with these very sophisticated issues? >> for all these pamphlets except for thomas payne "common sense" were written for people who were college educated. if you read john dickinson's pamphlet, it is loaded with classical references. than texte footnotes in some cases. he's writing for his fellow lawyers, educated people. of discussion.el the idea is to percolate down and get repeated in newspapers no boiled down to a phrase, taxation without representation, but the sophistication of the arguments are designed for

well-educated people. when you come to payne's template, he has no references any of thehlet to classics of western culture, except the bible and the english book of common prayer. he assumes his audience's readership knows nothing else except those two. make esoteric references to cicero or aristotle. the others are all displaying their knowledge in elite fashion. not payne. that's a major rhetorical breakthrough and it changes everything. he's writing for the tavern crowd. widetrying to reach a readership. it makes a big difference. thank you. how did the readers of the

pamphlets differ by colony? would massachusetts have a very large number of participants and south carolina very few? gordon: that's a good question. obviously readership would have been greater in those colonies which had cities. charleston was a fairly good sized city, but south of the mason-dixon line there really isn't any city. williamsburg was a small town and it only had any number of people when they met at the house of burgesses. have many more readers in the north, in the cities. boston, new york, philadelphia -- then you would have in the south. it's much more rural. we have some pamphlets from the south. --re's kind of a bias

someone like dickinson was circulating everywhere. among someone like jefferson would know and read dickinson's pamphlet. he would be aware of it. small byn elite world, our standards. i suppose in the south, about 2% of the population was college educated or hypertension to be a gentleman. significant. i would say in the south, probably 2% of the population was considered gentlemen. 10%he north, may as many as during those are the people reading those pamphlets.

until you get to someone like payne -- he's writing for the middling group. they are emerging. by the 19th century, they become the middle class. peoplere artisans and who are not college educated, but smart, and know how to read and write, and they become the readers of payne's pamphlets. how many of them read john dickinson's pamphlet is questionable. yorkm bob, an amateur new historian. one of the footnotes of history involving the declaration of independence, somewhat infamously, is the fact that new york did not participate in that vote. we abstained from the vote. we were under direction from the provincial congress to vote not for independence.

i wonder if you have any counsel or thoughts about why that happened. gordon: of all of the colonies, i have to say, new york probably had the greatest number of loyalists. had even then heterogeneity in the population, ethnic mixtures that i think helped to create a more fearful were aere so that people little more scared of democracy or letting the people rule. there's a hesitancy in new york. everyone joined.

also -- hamilton had to win the constitutional convention. the two delegates walked out. they were very much anti-federalist. they saw the virginia plan and they walked out. hamilton had no quorum. they had to move on without votes. hamilton made many speeches and new york never had a vote. new york was hesitant for that reason and they were paralyzed out of concern that the populace would run wild. they hesitated more than any other. >> you mentioned representation

and you mentioned the strength and the weaknesses of both. i am wondering if the original way we elected senators was for virtual representation and if it was meant to alleviate some of the actual representation. -- weaknesses of actual representation. gordon: having the senators were designed to appease small states that were worried and it never occurred that they would have the state legislature and there is a constitutional way of

dealing with this. there is no prescription in the constitution to have districts. we can elect at large and that was a case in many states. we changed it to districts and, in some states, when the legislature is locked and you have gerrymandering and so on, they are forced to run at large. we can do that now in california. the representatives of california could run at large and it would change the nature of things.

it is unlikely that would happen. by all means, in a small state, the representative runs at large. if you had them running at large, it would be constitutional and there is no prohibition against it. part of the madisonian idea behind the constitution was a -- to get a better caliber of person in the government. that is why he narrowed representation, so a place like south carolina would have the state legislature -- he thought the state legislatures were running wild and it was populism running wild. if you think the tea party is bad today, it was bad for him in 1780.

he screened out the populists and excessive democrats. it would work this way -- there were 235 members of the north carolina legislature and five congressman given in the first congress to north carolina and madison assumed to there will only five college graduates in carolina and they would be the ones who would be the liberal cosmopolitans. that was the idea. it was always a problem of how you would have a designation. we lost control of that. a problem we have with the house of representatives and the government in general is the destruction of the mediation institutions and we have created the atomization of politics with

everybody running -- it is unbelievable atomization of politics and we have destroyed the mediating institutions that acted as screens. the parties are weak. they used to control the candidates. now, look at the primaries. it is difficult to stop when you say, "let the people decide." who will stand against the people? the federalists are trying to find new ways of stifling the people because the people can be crazy. we see this happening. this is a problem. back when jack kennedy ran, he had a couple of primaries and had to run in west virginia to show dave lawrence or daly in

chicago, illinois. could the catholic win in the protestant state question mark he did and he controlled the delegations -- state? he did and he controlled the delegations. you cannot say that and you cannot get away with that now. we have destroyed the ability to choose our candidates properly and we can see that happening now in the republican party. so, it is actual representation and it is difficult to stop. you are letting the people the decide. who can stop that? democracy trumps everything. not to use that term. beating, no trump! questioner: what made the early

spark against england? it seems like england had the access to the political philosophers. why did it happen in the u.s.? why not in england? gordon: there were radical movements to change things. 1832, they rationalize the representational system and there are people corrupting -- protesting the corruption. the americans responded to the radical whig writers who are libertarian. that is the literature we found the most powerful. -- palatable.

read bernard or the book on origins of american politics to get a sense of this. it is a complicated issue of why americans and colonists deviate. they deviate from the beginning. we do not know this until issues are raised in this debate and people say, we do not believe in this. they are forced to confront experience and it did not create diversions. it exposed divergence. the englishman in the 18th century assumed the parliament was a protector of liberty and they did not realize americans would have a different view. americans respected parliament

and, when push comes to shove, when it comes to enacting unconstitutional laws, in england, they could not have the unconstitutional law. you cannot today. there is no supreme court that says a statute is unconstitutional. the americans deviate and it takes a debate to open their eyes to the experience. the experience is 150-175 years and the colonial experience -- that is why colonial history is important. it seems like nostalgia and it is not. it is important and it is much-neglected, i must confess. [applause]

host: thank you. thank all of you for coming. [applause] thank you so much. i think all of you for coming. i want to remind you that the book is a great holiday gift. [laughter] we will see you again. gordon wood will be out at the book signing table. the museum store is on the 77th street side. thank you all for coming. we love having you with us and we love doing this program. good night.

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] >> interested in american history tv? visit our website, www.c-span.org/history. >> this is the hardest problem i've seen in government. it implicates america's the rule ofprivacy, law, public safety. we just have to talk about it and understand how do we optimize both of these things we care about, privacy and safety. how do we do that? it's not easy. >> monday on "the communicators," general counsel for the bia agents association, and vice president for policy for the center of democracy and

technology, will discuss the conflict between fbi and apple over whether apple should let the fbi get into one of the phones of the suspected san bernardino terrorists. what this case could mean for communications, tech companies, and law enforcement in the digital age. >> the tool is a device that was intentionally designed to be impenetrable. we believe it threatens the way our search and seizure laws were designed to operate, reasonable searches under a lawful warrant can obtain access to evidence. we view it as a real threat to the fulcrum that the balance of privacy and security sets on. >> apple is concerned and we are all convinced -- concerned about the privacy on the device. we're also concerned that building any tool that allows you to break the security on the device is a privacy harm, one that will come back and bite apple users around the world. >> watch "the communicators"

monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> next, on american history tv on c-span3, a look back to the 1966 vietnam hearings. the first televised hearings on the vietnam war. we will see secretary of state in russ -- dean this 90 minute broadcast from cbs news includes opening statements and many questions and comments from senators. but first, donald richie providing context for the hearing. >> february 18th, 1966 -- secretary of state, dean rusk, testifying at the vietnam hearings. set the stage for us. >> secretary of state dean rusk had been secretary of state since 1961. john f. kennedy appointed him. when kennedy was assassinated,